Mike Piazza made what can only be described as a very strange decision.
Piazza is a Baseball Hall of Famer who made 12 All-Star appearances during his MLB career. Now 54 years old, the former catcher who hit the most home runs among all players at his position in MLB history is long retired from the game he once dominated. He lives in Italy with his wife and children, and he coaches the Italian national baseball team.
There is absolutely no reason for someone like Piazza to put himself through the vigorous challenges of an intense military-style boot camp at the whim of strict sergeants.
But that is exactly what he did when he signed up for Special Forces: World’s Toughest Test on FOX (premieres Wednesday at 8 p.m. ET). It is an endurance test reality competition where there is no prize money, no craft services, and no special accommodations while living during summertime in Jordan — particularly in Wadi Rum.
The only way to leave the show is to quit, and the main goal is literally just to “survive” these extreme challenges assigned by ex-special operations forces. The experience is demanding, both physically and emotionally, and does not seem like any fun whatsoever.
Piazza was joined by former NBA big man Dwight Howard, Olympic gold medalist Carli Lloyd, former NFL receiver Danny Amendola, former White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci, actress Jamie Lynn Spears, and several other celebrities of varying fame.
For The Win caught up with the longtime New York Mets star to discuss his experience on the show. He also touched on his former team, Jacob deGrom, the Steve Cohen era, the World Baseball Classic and more.
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
I’m from Los Angeles and live in New York, and I'd love to compare the two baseball towns with you.
Piazza: That’s interesting. I did that move, too, but from L.A. to New York. I grew up in Philadelphia, so that gave me a precursor to playing on the East Coast. I imagine that the markets in Philly and New York are not so different as far as the intensity of the fans. And I tell the story that I grew up watching the Phillies in the 1970s, and Mike Schmidt was my favorite player. Obviously, he had his run-ins with the fans playing well and getting booed when he wasn’t playing well. So at least I had a little education on the East Coast attitudes as far as their sports growing up watching the Flyers and the Sixers. I saw fans that had a lot of intensity.
But coming up through the Dodgers organization, culturally, was different. You get a little bit of a West Coast attitude and mentality. Coming up and just not being a highly-regarded prospect and working my way up and finding my position as a catcher and becoming Rookie of the Year and living on Manhattan Beach and going down on the weekends and watching the Cuervo Beach Volleyball Championships and then going to the stadium, I got immersed in West Coast culture pretty quickly. So I became a little bit laid back in that regard. The fans in L.A. were great. They came out, we drew 3 million fans every year. They were great fans. But it is a different market. New York is the market No. 1, and L.A. is market No. 2.
I think it’s a little easier to go from New York to L.A. than from L.A. to New York. But I learned very quickly in 1998, once I got there after the trade, that it was different. It was going to be difficult and tough. I was going to be under the microscope, and I was expected to perform and felt a lot more pressure. But I decided I was there for a reason. I always had this sense of fate, and things that don’t happen by accident. I believe in allowing myself to let go of things in life and throwing it up to God, for me, and I believe I was there for a reason. So after a while of baptism in fire, I was able to embrace New York and being there. I decided, hey, I’m here for a reason. I’m going to see it through and sign a multi-year and had an amazing eight years there.
How are Mets fans supposed to let go of Jacob deGrom?
Piazza: Jake was arguably one of the best pitchers to pitch for the Mets. That’s high company, no question about it. He’s got to be top two or three. However, I think it would be more difficult if the ownership or the team wasn’t able to reload with more talent in his realm. He’s always been a quiet guy. He hasn’t always expressed the way he feels. He was very popular with the fans.
But I say this all the time. It’s very difficult for us to put ourselves in his shoes. Whatever his reasons were, personal or whatever they may be — maybe he just wanted less pressure, maybe he just wanted a change, he never really expressed it. But I’m a glass-half-full guy in life. I think that we should embrace him for what he has done for the team and move on because obviously, he is, and be thankful and grateful he was here and we got to see some amazing years and wish him the best. I believe you reap what you sow. If you are negative and you’re angry and jealous, it’s like hey, he made his decision. We had to make our decision. We reloaded with some really, really great talent. Let’s move forward.
FTW: I imagine being the face of that franchise in particular is not easy.
Piazza: You are absolutely right. It is not. There is a lot of pressure. I had sleepless nights when I wasn’t playing well. After eight years in New York, I went to San Diego in 2006 and had a really nice year. It was a great situation. I played for Bruce Bochy. We had three catchers on the team. It was a great situation for me. But I was struggling into May. Bruce was like, “Man, you know how to hit. Relax. Don’t worry about it.”
It’s funny, there was a moment in San Diego — and I think I was 0-for-7 — and I grounded out and I think one of the fans was like, “Don’t worry about it, Mike. You’ll get ‘em tomorrow.” And I’m like, “Tell me I suck!” Do you know what I mean? “Boo me and tell me I suck! Because I need that right now. I need something to light a fire under my ass.” It was different. It was really different.
I went into May, and there was actually a time when I was going to retire. I was playing like [expletive]. I was going into May, and I was thinking, “Maybe I’m just done and I need to embrace it.” My wife got on the phone, and we talked and she said, “You always play pretty well in May. You’ve won Player of the Month. Why don’t you stick it out one more month and see how it goes?” I ended up going to Chicago, and I was like 9-for-12 in a series with a few home runs and had a great year. It was different. But I remember that distinctly. I was playing in San Diego, and everybody was so laid back and it was a complete culture shock from New York. That was the time when I really missed the intensity of New York.
What did you think of Mets owner Steve Cohen bringing back Old Timers Day?
Piazza: It’s just always good to have an owner that’s a fan of the club. I think he was more of a fan of the Mets before he was really very successful with his business. He has embraced and understands the history of the team. Some clubs have a thing where they don’t necessarily want to embrace their history because they want their new players to have their own history. As much as 1969 and 1986 are the greatest teams for the Mets, it’s still a little hard for the newer teams because this albatross is hanging over them. You think about the Miracle Mets and the 1986 Mets, and there is always a little bit of a struggle because as much as you want to embrace the history, you also don’t want to put so much pressure in a way on the new guys or the present team and achieve their legacy.
There is a balance, and I think Steve understands that balance, but I also believe baseball is such a unique game. If you look at the Yankees and some other prolific teams that have traditions, they embrace their alumni. He realizes we have some history, too. I think that was really rewarding to see. You can have both. If you’re so sensitive to worrying about every single detail of the present-day guys, you may be overanalyzing. The fans love it. To me, it’s all about the fans. If the fans want it and they overwhelmingly support it, let’s do it. It is all about them. They’re the ones buying tickets.
What are you most looking forward to about the World Baseball Classic?
Piazza: I love living in Italy. I have to give my wife all the credit. She said, “Let’s do something different. Let’s move to Italy and give our family a European experience.” My kids are fluent in Italian. My daughter is studying in Belgium. She speaks great French. It has been a real blessing for my family.
I’ve always loved that tournament, though. I think it’s a great tournament. There are always going to be questions about when it’s the right time. I love living in Italy. I love international baseball. I’ve been involved with the Italian national program on and off since 2006. I have coached for two European championships. I coached last year in Italy, and we finished third during a great tournament after previously finishing seventh in Olympic qualifiers. We have had some strides. It’s been difficult. It’s been challenging. We’re striking a balance by bringing native Italian players but also incorporating Italian-Americans who are eligible. We think this is a way we will continue to grow the game.
Fans get a little nervous about players playing and getting hurt. I played around the calendar for four years. I went to the Dominican Republic. I went to Mexico. I played in the Fall League. I played in the regular season. If you’re doing things the right way, you’re going to have less of a chance of injury. Injuries are part of the game, unfortunately. But I’m excited about it. It’s going to be a really cool event. As the time gets closer, you’ll see the intensity pick up and it’ll be very cool for the fans.
I know you’re involved in the Italian-American Sports Hall of Fame. Are you keeping up with Paolo Banchero at all?
Piazza: Well since doing Special Forces with Dwight Howard, I’ve started watching basketball a little bit more. I look forward to checking out Paolo Banchero more. Honestly, I’m an old-school guy. I’ve worked with Jerry Colangelo. His contributions to the game are enormous. It’s really rewarding to see Italian-Americans achieving. We’re really engaged in our sports. We love our history and our contributions to the United States not just in sports but in all walks of life. Dwight is my boy, though. We really became close while on the show. We’re texting while he’s in Taiwan, and it’s been a really rewarding friendship.
I watched Special Forces and it’s wild. How do you explain that experience?
Piazza: When you retire, there is always a lull there because you’re never going to be swinging that bat in front of 50,000 people again for the rest of your life. So whether or not you realize that or embraced that fact, you still miss it. It’s still a little bit of a challenge to embrace the next chapter. You almost become soft. You become a little spoiled. When you’re living in Italy with the food and the wine and the friends, it becomes home. But nothing will be the same as when you play professional sports, and it’s a life you can never duplicate or replicate in retirement. So you have that transition. I love to travel. I love to see the world. But after a while, you realize that it’s a different life, and it is softer.
So getting into the show was a real shock. A couple of people asked me if I would do it again. I wouldn’t do it the first time if I knew what it was about and if I knew how much torture it was. It was the most challenging. Professional sports are tough. I’ve been through some tough games. But it was nothing as far as the sheer mental terror and the absolute challenge of it all. Being older, you realize it’s a young person’s job. When you’re 18-23 years old, it’s different than when you’re 53. I was doing these exercises and I still like to work out but I realized I’m not in as good of shape as I think I am. I tell people the show is 100 percent authentic. There were no cuts and no craft services. It was like the second or third day, I was peeling the skin off my feet. I had athlete’s foot. I had jock itch. I thought the good thing about retiring is I never had to go through athlete’s foot and jock itch again, but it came right back! It was tough, man. It was really a grind. It took every amount of training and discipline that I had as an athlete to get through the experience, no question.
Why’d you do it, Mike?
FTW: That’s a good question. I don’t know, man. I had a few requests to do other shows and quite frankly, I wasn’t really into that. People that know me just know me. I like to do some things. I also enjoy my quiet time. I enjoy being in the background. Something struck me when I got asked to do it. I thought about it and I was like, “OK, I’m going to do this.” I looked at the British version, and I knew it was going to be tough. But it was also a little bit of a tribute to my dad. My dad would probably want me to do it. I know he served in the army. He was very proud of his service in the Korean War era.
He couldn’t go to Korea because he got a really bad foot infection, and he got re-assigned to West Germany and a lot of his friends didn’t make it back from Korea. So as much as he was sad that he lost his friends, he was blessed and happy. He almost lost his foot, but it probably saved his life. He always carried a little bit of a burden because he got a little bit of a lucky break and didn’t have to go into combat. But he also said it was a blessing because he probably wouldn’t have had his family otherwise. He used to tell me these stories, and I used to listen. So when I got asked, I listened. I thought maybe this would be a small tribute to him.
Fans associate you with post-9/11 recovery. Did that play any role here?
FTW: One of the staffers, Rudy Reyes, was a recon marine. He told me he was serving in Afghanistan and saw the home run and said all of his guys were talking about it after 9/11. That was an interesting correlation as well. That really wasn’t prominent because I didn’t want to harp on it as far as I wanted so much more reverence for the military aspect of it. But the fact I was able to come through in that moment and have a great moment, I also realized that these guys were really over there. The British guys were telling me stories about where they were deployed as well. It is very heavy. You don’t realize how blessed we are to have these guys out there just looking out for us. They’re very special people. That was something for me that was very heavy. It was an honor. I tried to honor them even though in my older state I wasn’t able to compete on their level. But I tried to keep the respect level very high.
What is the most unfathomable thing that you did while on the show?
Piazza: There was a lot of physical stuff. The traversing, the repelling, things I’d never done before. That’s another thing. They basically just said here. We ran up Aqaba Port Tower with a 30-pound rock and a 15-kilo backpack on. And we got to the top, went outside the tower, clicked on a thing and repelled out. I had never done that in my life. I didn’t have a course. I didn’t ever research it. I had no idea. Next thing I know, I’m on the outside looking almost 300 feet down and I’m thinking, “What the hell am I doing here?” Literally, if I made a mistake, you could die. That’s another thing. Of course, you had safety equipment.
But when you did the traversing, to get up the two cables to go over this crevice, you had to hike up this rock face. If you tripped or fell, you were dead. There is no way you would survive. You would roll down this rock face and turn into a bowling ball, and there is no way you could stop. About three-quarters of the way up, I remember huffing and puffing, and I was really exhausted. When you get tired, your legs get tired, and you start to think, “[Expletive], if I trip, I’m dead.” That was the most terrifying part of the show, I’m telling you. Just getting to some of the drills was hard.
FTW: I don’t think you could give me Verlander’s contract to do one of those drills.
Piazza: I hope that comes across, man. Even things like the obstacle course! Going through the pipe, the Brits call it the tube, it was like 75 feet in a pipe. I’m a big guy, so getting stuck in there with the mud being caked, and I tore all the skin off my elbows trying to get through.
The tear gas drill! I tell people that the tear gas scene where I fall down, that is the nastiest crap you could ever breathe. It was incredibly intense. It’s one thing to be physically exhausted where you have absolutely nothing left. Tear gas is horrifying. It’s literally like being deep-fried. That’s the only way I could describe it.
Your throat — you don’t realize how much mucus you can produce in your body. I became disoriented because it affected me so much. There was another way out of there, and I was trying to go out the way I came in and there was Rudy who was this bodybuilder type holding the door. So I was smashing the door trying to get the hell out of there. Rudy always says, “That Piazza guy, he almost put me on my ass!” Because I was getting out of that freaking container. Then I was taking in so much tear gas that I basically just passed out.
That was crazy, man. A few months ago, we were watching a European soccer game. I think it was in Turkey or something, and there was a riot and the fans were going crazy, and they were starting to lob tear gas into the fans and then everybody went bat-[expletive] crazy. People were running everywhere, and my wife was watching the game with me and she goes, “You’re outside, what’s the big deal? It’s just tear gas.” I said, “Whoa. I smelled that [expletive]. It’s the most horrifying thing you can experience. It is so bad.” The funny thing is two of the Brit guys told me every year, they get one or two guys that it doesn’t even affect them. They just do the drill and walk out. I’m like, “Man, they must be freaks because that stuff was nasty.”
Tell me more about the new friendships you made on the show.
Piazza: I was very impressed with Dwight. We became very close very quickly. He’s hysterical. I became very close with Danny Amendola as well. The interesting thing was the contrast between the athletes who were team athletes as opposed to individual athletes — like Gus Kenworthy, who was on the show, was an individual athlete. So he’s never really been on a team. Those of us who were on a team embraced being on a team a little bit quicker than the individual people or people like Mel B. or Kenya Moore who had never been on a team. The hardest part for them, which we got, is that you had to break yourself down and realize that we have to help each other. That is why me and Dwight and Danny bonded right away. We had a team zen vibe.
Some of the individual people were clashing with discipline and respect and the concept that they were trying to break us down, break our egos down, put us to the lowest levels and take our pride away so that we became a team. Everyone was different from different backgrounds and different upbringings so to have us come together so quickly in such an intense environment where we had to depend on each other really gives me a lot of hope and was really encouraging to see. Even though we do have differences, we really have a lot in common.
I know you’ve got your radio background. What are you spinning these days?
Piazza: I was thinking of just posting my playlist for the day when I’m working out. It’s diverse. Today, I was listening to some old Dio. I was listening to some Bang Tango. I was listening to some White Snake — but not the old White Snake, the Steve Vai White Snake, which was cool. I like obscure hard rock. I like Rainbow with Joe Lynn Turner. I like the Dio version, too. I like Van Halen and AC/DC and some of those bands that I grew up on. I like Zakk Wylde. He’s doing the Pantera tribute. Zakk is a good friend of mine. I know a lot of guys in bands: John Bush from Armored Saint is on the tour with W.A.S.P.
But I’m also listening to classical music, some of my kids’ stuff, and Italian music. There is a song by Fedez called “Senza Pagare” which means “We Won’t Pay,” and it was very popular. I come from the era that you play what you like but my kids will tell me that song is too old.
I love live music. I always wanted to go on one of those metal cruises. They have nine or ten bands on a cruise. You just listen to live music all day.
